Dance To The Music – A Blast From the past from February 14th 2017

Dance To The Music – A Blast From the past from February 14th 2017

The last day I’ve been going “Argh” as I realize the barriers that have been put to thinking and expression thereof, as well as the continuous blast of “this you must think, this you must celebrate” (more onerous than even “this you must not think” and “this you must not do” that Heinlein cautioned us about) just in the last ten years or so.

The first occasion of ARGH was my going over page proofs for my mystery, Dipped, Stripped and Dead (under pen name Elise Hyatt.)

It was supposed to be out in December, then the collapse, and then January turned into “bursts of insane working, punctuated by the worst flu I’ve ever had.” That extended into February. Yesterday Dorothy Grant (BTW, her first book is out) pointed out if I didn’t try to use the treadmill desk the first day I feel up to it, I might not relapse again. It might have been too late for that warning, though this relapse feels less awful than the last. I should have pointed out to her that sanity is for sissies, but she might be able to slap me, even from Texas.

Anyway, in going over Draw One In The Dark, I came across a character I’d forgotten was in the book. First I should point out the furniture refinishing mysteries are where I put most autobiographical details, to the point of older son making me change a thing because he uses it as a password. Both boys refer to this series as “selling our childhood retail.” As in, E. the little boy character in the book, is a composite of my sons at that age.

The character I had forgotten was a Marine, who was a carpenter and six foot six or seven, whose other “personality” was a female who liked to dress in extremely high heels. He was completely harmless, and a very nice man, except for a tendency to think my wedding vows didn’t mean much. THIS part was goofy. (Though he took his rebuff with grace.) And hitting on me in my own kitchen, while wearing women’s clothing was very very creepy. His other goofy idea was that he passed as female. (OTOH best line to guys who were making fun of him in a bar was “How would you like to have your ass kicked by a guy in a dress?”)

Anyway, I use a version him in that book, and gentle ribbing happens.

It occurred to me that I couldn’t get that book traditionally published today for the thought crime of “laughing at the transgendered” (which I wasn’t. I was laughing at a very specific person whom I actually liked, but who had some odd quirks in his brain, as who doesn’t?)

And I went “ARGH.” Because this is an area in which we must now think that someone’s cross dressing name/persona is as valid or more valid than his male personality/person, and we’re supposed to call his occasionally liking to dress as a woman “genderfluid.” We MUST also not find it funny that he thinks his female persona is beautiful. (He is/was — we lost touch and he was older than I– a gorgeous man, of the “craggy type” which does not translate well to female beauty.)

In a way, this type of enforcing of what we MUST think of people’s little quirks is less tolerant and makes us less free. I mean, I honestly don’t know if my friend viewed this other persona of his as a whole other “person” or just as a hobby, i.e. something fun he liked to do/explore. And that was fine. I mean, we didn’t hold our noses up at him, and it was none of our business what he chose to do. But now, by the dictates of the politically correct church, he and I and all our friends would have to think of it as very serious indeed, a “genderfluid” thing that meant he wasn’t the same sex his body was for at least part of his time.

How is this helping? Sure, if you really are a person who thinks he/she shifts genders occasionally, you now have reinforcement/support. But what about everyone else? What about the vast spectrum of people, from guys who think women clothes are fun, to guys who just want to explore that side of themselves? WHY must there be only one correct way to be a guy who periodically dresses/thinks he passes as a woman? And isn’t labeling every other view of it as hateful… rather hateful?

My other moment of Argh was occasioned by younger son. No, that doesn’t mean younger son did something wrong. He didn’t. It’s more that younger son told me about something. (Oh, dear Lord, why does he do that?) and what he told me about was that some show introduced the concept of “Galentine’s” on the 13th. This is a day for “ladies to celebrate ladies.” What was driving younger son bananas (with a side of kiwi) is that he seeing all his female friends fall into this.

The idea is frankly loony. Valentine’s itself is highly commercialized, but most of the time, my husband I circumvent it by having walks together, or just watching a movie together. However, a day to celebrate being a couple is useful (and it wasn’t proclaimed by some government. In fact, I’m fairly sure what it is in the US grew organically, because it’s not the same anywhere else. In Portugal it’s considered “boyfriend/girlfriend day” but it mostly amounts to some kissing and maybe flowers. Or it did in my day.) Trust me, in the years of raising toddlers, any time to remember yes, you’re in love, and what brought you together is important.

But Galentine? What the actual heck? It’s not bonding, and it’s not building a relationship that is a cornerstone of society. No. It’s … putting up lists of your friends who are female and celebrating them BECAUSE THEY’RE FEMALE. This is something they were born, and can’t help being, and… what are we celebrating, precisely?

It’s not that I object to “ugly/awkward girls get a day too.” No. it’s the undertones of it. It’s the “It’s just as good to be a woman as a couple (you know, the future would beg to differ) and how being a woman is something you should celebrate because… because… because…. I don’t know? Because we have vaginas?

Picture guys saying that being a man is something to celebrate, because… they have penises? Mind you, I’m a big fan of both men and their ah implement, but seriously? It would be laughable. And celebrating because you’re a woman is equally laughable.

Mind you, I’m probably the voice crying in the wilderness in the days of pussy hats and women marching around with signs painted with vulvas or proudly proclaiming they have a vulva, but it seems to me if what makes you special is the non-thinking thing between your legs, you’re doing life wrong, you’re doing equality wrong and MOST importantly, you’re doing SPECIAL wrong.

I have friends who are female and friends who are male. Not only do I not care what their equipment is, but frankly I don’t want to think about their equipment. The only person whose sexual organs matter to me (other than myself) is my husband. It’s the only one whose sexual organs have an even remote effect on our relationship (I maintain if we lost the capacity to have sex tomorrow, love would go on, so, yes, remote. But it would be less fun.)

What makes my friends special are the things we both enjoy, the things we like to talk about, their fascinating minds or their generous personality, or their kindness, or their enthusiasm or all of those and more. None of them, though are “vagina” or “penis.”

Celebrating my lady friends is goofy. Celebrating my gentlemen friends sounds like I’m having affairs. I love all my friends, and wouldn’t even be opposed to giving non-romantic valentines, the way elementary school kids do it. (Only not to everyone I know.) BUT I don’t think of my friends in neat little groups. A couple of my best-male friends are gay. I don’t have them in a group for “my gay friends.” I only think of them in those terms when refuting some idiocy from left or right about “all gay males” or when the subject — usually a joke — is one they’d enjoy. In that sense it’s like thinking of my “writer friends” a fluid group who will appreciate some jokes/situations more than my other friends.

Putting people in groups, some of which are to be celebrated and some reviled is a trick for “governing” and controlling people, which has been used since machiavelli.

What burns me is seeing people willingly cooperate in this, seemingly unaware that any group that’s uplifted can be cast down when policy demands it. It’s all a game to control people.

They can pipe all they want. I’m not dancing.

Happy valentines to all my friends, male and female, all of whom are loved even those I’ve never met but who make this blog interesting.

You are loved, all of you, you fascinating individuals. Now, go be you.

Wow, no mask requirement just yet. Between heart issues and occasional lung problems, my first reaction to such an order would be “Hell NO!”, followed by a call to my doctor to get a waiver. As it stands, other than medical trips (at both the clinic and hospital-based labs, masks are mandatory) the hospice’s thrift shop requires a mask. I could have begged a pass there, but just did the top-tie (AKA, I know the mask has two ties, but I’m sick of it already). Enough of the staff at the store is in a higher-risk group than I am, so I was willing to go along with Kung Flu Theater.

I see that Despicable Kate got the Oregon Supremes to issue a stay on the Baker county* circuit court’s order invalidating the emergency orders beyond the legally supported 28 days. Kate isn’t willing to let the D dominated state house and senate actually have a vote to extend the orders (something about losing the elections by huge amounts, perhaps), but since she’s not supposed to be running in 2022, she’ll take the heat.

(*) Almost as far as you can get from Portlandia and still be in a city in Oregon.

The above which was utterly beside the point of the post. My apologies to Mrs. Hoyt – I assumed it would be at the bottom of a longer chain of comments.

So ObHoyt (to paraphrase another list custom) I was tickled to discover that E was at least partly real. He’s one of my favorite parts of the book. The other being Goldport itself. I wouldn’t want to live there, mind, but it’s a top favorite vacation spot.

And I think the Heinz 57 gender* identities are because you MUST have a right-click to be put in (why? pecking order?) and even for good little Narrativists, those narrow boxes have to chafe. Advance they’ve been very very carefully taught not to think (everything Heinlein ever wrote about say, Methodists) well, the only possible solution is more boxes, right?

*There are exactly 3 genders. He, she, and it. Other languages can do as they please.

Genders. Right. Linguistically, gender has no real connection to sex. There are languages with many more than three genders. Gender is about subject-verb-adjective agreement, and is a redundancy mechanism. So, in French the word for ‘war’ is not feminine, it just sounds like words that are feminine, and the verb tense and adjective forms that are used for that word are the same as for those other words. Calling it a “feminine” is easier to remember than calling it a “type a” noun or other some such, but it isn’t about any supposed female characteristics war might have.

Similarly, a sociologist’s “gender” is about social roles. When people say that “gender is a social construct” they are technically correct, at least if they’re in the social sciences, but people tend to interpret gender as a polite word for “sex” and get confused because even though it might be such a term in common speech, that’s not how sociologists think about it. Some social roles are more associated with men than women, truly, but many decades of effort on the part of feminists has greatly reduced the segregation of roles by sex so it’s not clear what roles are meant when a biological woman describes herself as having a male gender.

Of course, since humans are social creatures, and since the species needs sex to survive, some social roles are sex-based, since they have to do with courtship. That’s rather harder to describe as a “social construct” because straight men are not interested in men who fill certain societal roles associated with women, they are instead interested in people who are women in a biological sense, as straight women are interested in biological men. Again, it seems some people are confused by terms that have a useful meaning in one context not having the same meaning in all others.

English resolved this by utilizing an indeterminate male pronoun, granting the person referenced the status of being fully human until she opened her yap to complain about it and thus relegating themselves to sub-human status. NOT by being female but by being an ass about it.
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Sib did research in the archive at Harvard. The archivists bent over backwards with help and to provide extra information because Sib was . . . polite and respectful and followed the rules without pitching a fit. Sib was a little taken aback.

Should probably add that Little Brother is the same as Sib, but the elitist “I want to Harvard so I’m automatically right and better than you!” attitude has rubbed off on him to some extent. But at least he’s self-aware enough to recognize it.

And he utterly despises the undergrads he’s had to teach and proctor (he’s a PhD student) because they all scream and whine and cry and threaten if he gives them less than an “A” for any reason. Up to and including not handing in the assignment.

Lois Bujold mostly uses ‘it’ for people who actually ARE biologically neither male nor female (Cetagandan ba) or both (Betan hermaphrodite). Today’s pronoun-obsessed alphabet-soup ‘activists’ strike me as just a bunch of troublemakers seeking any excuse to be ‘offended’ and force people to obey their ever-changing rules.

One thing I like about Beta Colony is the earrings that denote each person’s nature, preferences and interests. You don’t have to wonder how to address them, or whether they’re compatible. There’s everything from ‘male seeking female’ or ‘female not seeking anybody right now’ to ‘hermaphrodite seeking anything on two legs’. 🙂

Oh, I’m not accusing You (or anyone else here) of being confused. I am claiming that there seems to be confusion among the general offline population, and that seems to be caused by misusing a perfectly fine technical term in nontechnical ways.

I also wouldn’t classify what the sociologists did as “misappropriation” of the word “gender.” To me it seems to be a fine analogy to the linguistics term, bearing in mind that I’m not particularly expert in either linguistics or any of the social sciences, although this opinion is somewhat informed by a conversation I had with an anthropologist of my acquaintance.

I know a fair number of Gay people, and several Trans of one degree or another, and I fear for them. The Prog-Left nonsense that carries on ostensibly in their name cannot possibly end well. Too many politically motivated dolts like the nitwits who keep attacking the Masterpiece Cake Shop, and too many predator nuts like Jessica Yaniv ensure there will be a MASSIVE backlash. And the nitwits and predators DESERVE it, but it’s going to splash over onto anyone who is, as the South used to put it, ‘a little funny’.

And don’t get me started on the ‘Trans’ ‘athletes’ who have been shouldering their way into women’s competitions.

*grumble*

The Progressive Left is so driven to be ‘advanced’ that they never know when to freaking STOP. They can never grasp that it’s time to say, ‘we’ve won’ and stop moving the goalpost. That’s above and beyond the drive many of them have to be dictators.

There are plenty of loud out and proud women who give the infamous digital salute to feminists and those scientically, economically, and rationally impaired ladies who claim to Speak For All of Us and even advocate for men’s human rights.

When the guys and gals who cannot form a sexual pair-bond (which is a hard row to hoe) start doing the same, I’ll be sympathetic to the group as a group.

Feminism seems to have lost its allure lately with less than than 30% of American women identifying as feminist. It was much higher when I was young – of course, when I was a child there was still some overt sex discrimination, de jure as well as de facto. Now what sex discrimination remains in this country is mostly female affirmative action at the expense of men.https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/american-women-and-feminism

I will say this for the Trans people caught up in this drivel; a number of them have come forward and said flatly that making the transition was a mistake that f*cked their lives up further. There have also been gays who bucked Teh Narrative; I recall a writer who was a publishing articles in The National Review in the 1990’s. But our would-be Lords and Masters have no interest in broadcasting such views, so one does not hear of them unless one is digging.

And there are some who still think their transition was the best choice who argue against transitioning children or assuming any failure to be sex role conforming 100% is evidence of transgenderism and the need to transition.

Oh, I am so going to use that in a story. Main character has bright purple hair, gets hit on by a very aggressive lesbian, who gets enraged when told she’s fishing in the wrong pond. Purple hair is a STATEMENT!!! that you’re gay and proud and yada yada yada.

Except that purple is the hair color she was born with. Genetic engineering, many generations back. Her children might inherit blue hair, or green, or a number of other ‘unnatural’ colors.

That doesn’t matter. She’s appropriating one of their Virtue Signal flags and gets all sorts of hate over it.
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They say I can’t be a nonconformist because I’m not like the other nonconformists.

In college I had to gently explain to a newly-out and still not comfortable lesbian that just because I flew and worked on airplanes and wore slacks didn’t meant that I “batted for her team,” as the phrase goes. I steered her toward a really kind, older lesbian who helped her get things sorted out.

Like my late, unlamented Uncle-in-law, Alexi (née Bobby), who presented as Gay (I am convinced) because it bought him an excuse for his anti-social nature. What he really was, was a Predatory Narcissus. To be Gay he would have had to be capable of loving someone other than himself.

The genuinely Gay and truly gender-confused need to reject the claims of the Predators amongst. them. Sadly, they don’t seem able to do so. Which isn’t altogether surprising. Sad, but not astonishing.

They did, but the organs of culture intentionally ignore them because the organs of culture have an agenda unrelated to gay or trans, but finds the later as a useful and the former as formerly useful tools.

Look at how quickly trans rights became TRANS RIGHTS after the SCUS forced gay marriage on the nations. It was a matter of days.

“The Progressive Left is so driven to be ‘advanced’ that they never know when to freaking STOP.”

It only seems that way because they don’t actually care about the things they say they care about. What they actually want is North Korea, with them running the show. Anything short of that isn’t good enough, so they keep pressing onward.

The situation with the Gay Maffia thing is classic. Leftists don’t care about “teh gays.” In fact, one of the Left’s favorite pastimes is calling Conservatives fags. So of late we are treated to the spectacle of a battered women’s shelter being vandalized and hounded by… Leftists. Because the shelter won’t admit -men-. “Die TERFS!!!” sprayed on the window, and a dead rat nailed to the door.

Logically if the Left cared about Women’s Rights, and Gay Rights, and Trans Rights, none of this would be happening. But they don’t care. What they do is ride a victim group or an issue until it dies in its tracks, then they jump on the next one and ride that.

This is why it’s so sad they’ve decided to infiltrate and use Science Fiction and nerddom generally for their disgusting politics. We nerds -need- a place to go, and they’ve stolen the one we made for ourselves.

I wouldn’t say that all, or even most, of them want North Korea, though that is an urge that motivates many. What the majority want is to be avant-guard; to be different from the Great Unwashed. To champion Great New Ideas. And since the vast majority have few ideas of any sort at the best of times, what they end up championing is drivel.

Actually depends on the language. English barely has two. Some languages use animate and inanimate vs male and female. Some Slavic use both M/F/N and A/I with weird divisions. Diyrbal, an Australian aboriginal language, does something similar and has four and with some neuter things included in male, some in female (including fire and violence, which I find amusing), and then the others divided into two separate genders along food vs. non-food.

Being a woman is something you should celebrate because… because… because…. I don’t know? Because we have vaginas?

Hate crime! Hate crime! Hate crime in progress! A blogger has just said something that implies that being a woman has something to do with having a vagina. Transphobia in progress here. Someone please drag Ms. Hoyt off to the nearest reeducation camp until she can do nothing but recite, “Some women have penises.”

Having a vagina means that you are possessed of sagacious wisdom, a benevolent love of humankind, and a certain indescribable something that makes you fit to rule over those testosterone-addled brutes who have lorded it over and abused womyn since prehistory, inflicting such horrors as pregnancy, childbirth and the care of screaming, toddling nuisances upon them. Or so I hear tell.

Unless of course you want to keep your penis but get some boobs, too. And tell vaginal women that they are oppressing you. And that those who don’t wish to date or marry you are oppressing you as well.

There was something that floated to the top of my rather fogged consciousness recently, and that was the thought of the celebration of getting a period. These days it’s ‘oh thank God, I’m not pregnant’; but there seems to be traditions where getting your first period was a social sign, especially amongst women, that you had taken your first steps to adulthood, and could now start learning about other womanly things.

Then again, being womanly in that sense was not seen as a negative, but a part of ‘growing into oneself’ when these days it seems to me that feminism absolutely hates femininity in all it’s forms unless it’s clothed in a pseudo-masculinity, and eschews adulthood as a whole, while demanding the joys and privileges of adulthood while wanting no more responsibility than a newborn babe.

“being a woman is something you should celebrate because… because… because…. I don’t know? Because we have vaginas?”

Vaginas are only really useful if giving birth, otherwise they’re messy, maintenance heavy, prone to infection in multiple manners and generally less functional than danglies. Sure, guys go nuts for them but that’s mainly because they don’t have to do the upkeep.

Ai U don’t see much reason for celebrating them in a culture that is hostile to their only justification.
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I see a certain utility in days to celebrate guys and gals (and may luck be a lady tonight). Having a day where everyone (many people) think about the ways that men and women are different, how those attributes are valuable (even the bat-shit crazy ones), and how we would be worse off without them (however infuriating) would be useful. One day to celebrate the role of each sex in keeping the world turning.
Of course the people behind “galantine’s” day would be horrified because such days would point out the Great Lie of feminism, that men and women are the same (except that women are better, except that women are fainting flowers, which is better buster).

Eh. The music I used to dance to, and on occasion still do, ain’t ever been the kind the busybodies and snobs wanted me to. The cold tones of the scolds and the cranks don’t match the melody in my head.

I had a thought about how human brains classify things, and that can get out of hand when one tends to think of those made-up classes as strictly proscriptive rather than loosely descriptive, and the tendency of groups to turn things up to eleventy to make themselves distinct (and suffering the consequences thereof, least they used to). But the brain is sleepy and not working well. So it’s probably a mash of things someone else said somewhere better and clearer. *chuckle*

Cynical thought: those made-up classes so beloved of progressives are because progs are very poor at classifying, and therefore in their minds, which lack the ability to make broader connections, everyone is their own special class.

This is not the same as recognizing individuals; it’s a juvenile need for everything to fit into its assigned box, but without the tools to sort the boxes.

Simple minds require simple answers. Real people are too complex for them, and must therefore be reduced to one-dimensional entities defined by one-word labels. That is their world, the one they seek to impose on everybody else.

Probably not a useful comment, but in Japan, of course, they have adopted Valentine’s Day, lock, stock, and barrel. However, it has changed to a day when women give men chocolates (mostly). Often giri choco (duty chocolates) due to positions (e.g., the boss gets chocolates from the secretary, no matter what she thinks of the old slob). AND they added White Day, March 14, which is the day when men are supposed to give the women chocolates (returning the favor from Valentine’s day). Now, there have been various suggestions about treating yourself on either of these days, so if you think you aren’t going to get enough chocolate from your circle of friends or employees, you are allowed to buy yourself a gift. Anyway, you might find it amusing that the lover’s day has been thoroughly commercialized in the transition to Japan, and split into two pieces. It sure sells a lot of chocolate! As far as I know, at this point, while Japan does have a number of popular, well-known transvestites, homosexuals, and other people who don’t fit into the basic gender roles or customs, no one has suggested adding a few more days to provide each of them with their own chocolates… although it might be an overlooked marketing possibility!

Entertainingly, the tendency on White Day isn’t to give chocolate, but a different sort of gift (though if the guy doesn’t know the girl that well/giri presento, a generic sort of decorative item (say, purse dangle/keychain or pocket mirror), food or, yes, chocolates, is just as acceptable.

According to Manga (tm!) those that don’t fit into the traditional customs or roles just jump on the bandwagon anyway!

I’ve told my family that if they want to give me a present, and can’t think of anything, either get me chocolate (made with sugar, not sugar free anything, because allergies) or offer to buy me a book. Makes it super easy since we’re scattered across the globe.

But if someone does get me something else, I will be happy with it anyway! (I got a large tea carafe, tea that tastes like chocolate fruitcake, and cookies for Mother’s Day. Yum~)

So what you are saying is that the Japanese are a sexist, transphobic, oppressive society clinging bitterly to traditional binary sexual identities? Apparently we did not drop enough nukes on them and need to initiate a complete economic boycott, terminate all military aid and invite the Enlightened People’s Republic of China to occupy the island and set them straight warped.
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Sometimes it feels like being a spectator in my own country. Here in what we call the Mid-South, the area along the Mississippi river bound by Tennessee Arkansas and Mississippi, outside of the major city itself life has changed little or not at all. You see some wearing masks, In Tennessee they closed the Hair/nail places and dine in restaurants, but rurally speaking, Naaah. The Gov. here in North MS is practically invisible and we like it that way. I have visited Colorado and points north of there in the past and it is beautiful, far more pleasant than here but… How can you stand to live in a place that treats you so badly? I’m not saying Here doesn’t have it it’s problems. It has them in spades especially for the poor. I don’t see how active interference is better than benign neglect though. I know the answer to the question is that the place you call Home is well, home. But still…

You’re still ahead of the famous historian Fredrick Jackson Turner. He published one book, and his editor want his own tombstone to read “I got a book out of Fredrick Jackson Turner.” (Turner kept researching and researching and writing and writing and researching and . . . never finished the second book.)

What about the vast spectrum of people, from guys who think women clothes are fun, to guys who just want to explore that side of themselves?

This, so much this.

No, seriously, the space to just be a crossdresser has collapsed (at least for me…women dressing as men is mainstream and has been my whole life, although tomboys are suffering a parallel problem). Most people at even kink events assume “crossdressing=trans” and ask about pronouns and “fem name”. I know at least one who has quit because he was tired of being assumed to be trans when he was just have a bit of fun that got him all randy.

And when the backlash comes (and it looks like it is here with the reaction to the CT judge) the trans people this was supposed to help will suffer and the drag queens and kings and crossdressers won’t get their spaces back.

May 27 is seven days from now. Per wiki, T-Day is the day when the President declares a national emergency and begins partial mobilization. Per wiki, May 27, 1941 was the declaration of unlimited national emergency for WWII.

So, at least it isn’t WWII.

Thank the Lord, even if we are heading for a hot war with China, at least we have Trump and not FDR.